Farming of Sandalwood Tree

Sandalwood tree, botanically named as Santalum album, of family Santalaceae. The woody tree known for its scentend hard wood or heartwood. Presence of Santalol, chemically a sesquiterphene alcohol, known for its pleasant aroma, has made this heartwood very precious. The santalol present in the heartwood remains unaltererd decades together. The oil extraced is used industrially for the manufacturing of soaps, cosmetics, ceremonial incences, candales, perfumes and ayurvedic formulations. The rirutal importances of sandalwood also well known. The wood being closely grained is renowned for elegant and intrinsic carving and articrafting.

Sandalwood grows to a height of 15-20 m and to the girth of 1-2.5 m, with scentless whitish softwood and scented yellowish brown heartwood. Globally, sandal wood trees distributed in countries like Indonesia, Cambodia, China, Austalia, Madagaskar. In Inda, the trees are seen in states like Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Kerala, Andrapradesh and in some parts of orissa, Bihar, Rajastan, Maharastra. Earlier this valuable woods were part of forest and silviculture, but fast becoming the part of private land nowadays.

          It is an important factor to be known by the cultivator of  sandalwood is that tree is semi parasitic in habitate.   Though the tree produces its own food by having lush green leaves, but depends on other plants for water and  minerals required for photosynthesis. Having no root hairs, but haustoria, a specialised club shaped structure,   hepls in root parasitism. Haustoria come in contact with roots of adajacent host  plants, penetrate and establish there to have connection with vascular system. Fortunately,  the tree has plenty of host plants and can parasitise as many as 300 species of them. They can parasitise multiple plants symultaneously.   Plants like Cajanus cajana (Red gram) and Anternanthera Sps is very popular host plant used during nurcery stage.   As the tree establishes, the same may parasitise the host trees like Casuarina equisetifolia, Pongamia pinnata, Cassia pistula, Cassia siamea, Mangifera indica (Mango), Phyllanthus emlika (Amla), etc. 

Sandalwood as a Semi-Parasitic Tree

Climatic and Soil Requirement of Sandalwood: Sandalwood is a tropical to subtropical tree. Moderate railfall with more number of sunny days are enogh for them to thrive well. The trees can tolerate the temperature ranging from 5°C- 48°C. In case of soil, the trees can be grown in any kind of soils, from sandy to clay. The most prefered soil is Red ferruginous and lateritic soils.

Nursery Management in Sandalwood: Sandalwood is propagated through seeds. Seeds are collected from the healthy elderly trees which are more the 20 years of age. Trees selected for seed collection should be of high santalol content. Usually seeds show high level of dormnacy with thick seed coat. Collection of seeds start with the collection of ripened fruits. Seeds are evacuated and dried under shade and then used for sowing. Sandal wood seedling are raised on flat or raised bed first and poly bags for further developments. Red soils mixed with river sands in 1:3 proportion is most suited to bed formation. In polybags sand, red soil and FYM are mixed in equal proportion for better result. Seeds are broadcast evenly on prepared beds and mulched and watered regularly. 2.5 kgs of seeds are reuired to broadcast on bed of dimension of 10mx1m. When seedling attains 4 to 6 leaves stage, the same is transferred carefully. Seeds of Cajanus cajana are sown in each poly bags. Host plants are pruned regularly to avoid over shadowing sandalwood seedling. The saplings are ready to transplant in field with in 6-12 months with attainment 1-1.5 ft height and woody stems. The raising the nurcery of sanadalwood often suffers from fungal or nematode or combined effect of both. Here affected leaves become yellow, roots decay and plants wilt and die. To overcome this, seeds are mixed with suitable nematicides and fungicides before sowing. Sprayings can be taken up fornightly with fungicides’ and monthly with nematicides control of disease in later stages. Maintenance of optimum soil moisture is very important for beds and growing bags. During rainy seasons nursery beds are covered with plastic materials to protect from flashing damage by rain drops and to avoid exess water entering the beds. During the other seasons beds may be mulched with paddy straw to retain optimum moisture. Poly bags selected should be large enough to hold both host plant and sandal wood sapling. Protruding out of saplings roots from polybags stictly avoided. In such cases saplings are transferred to new bags.

Spacing and Planting: Spacing given between the trees and between the raws decides number of trees can be had in a particular area. It decides final outcome and profit. Growing of suitable host trees adjacent to sandalwood is also an important factor to be considered while desiding the space. Usually recommended space is 10 x 10 ft to 12 x 12 ft for. Initially hosts plants like Pigeon pea, Mimosa pudica, Alternathera sps, may be grown very close to sandalwood sapling, so that they reach the roots of host plant. After few initial years permanent host plants are planted at a distance 5-8 ft away from main plants. Once again the space of host plant is decided by type of trees, its canopy and root systems.

Cultivation Aspects of Sanadalwood

Being a high value tree, sandalwood cultivation has been posed with possible threat of theft, stress passing, grazing by animals, felling of trees. At the same time trees have long waiting period from the stage of sapling to maturity. Partoling with trained, dedicated and armed persons is much needed. Having live fesces by planting thorny lofted bushes or bamboos have been found effective. Having the facilities of abundant light, CCTV surivivelence system, alarming systems can be made available as protective measures. Strongly owen iron meshes or welded structure with loafty erected gates with enty and exit proptocol is handy. Errecting strong iron cages around individual trees to certain hight has also been found useful.

Security Measures to sandalwood plantations

Sources: 1.Capacity Building Training programme on sandalwood for Karnataka forest Department, by Sanadalwwod Soiety of India (R)

2. Sandal wood information System, Institute of Wood science and technology, Ministry of Environment, forest and Climate Change, GOI

3. TNAU Agritechportal: Industrial Foresty:Sandalwood